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Christian Bök
Christian Bök (born August 10, 1966) is an experimental Canadian poet. He is the author of Eunoia, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize, and which has been called "Canada's best-selling poetry book ever."Ed Park, "Crystal Method," Village Voice, Dec. 16, 2003. Life Bök was born in Toronto, Ontario, as Christian Book, but changed his last name "to avoid unseemly confusion with the Bible." He began writing seriously in his early 20s, while earning his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Carleton University in Ottawa. He returned to Toronto in the early 1990s to study for a Ph.D. in English literature at York University, where he encountered a burgeoning literary community that included Steve McCaffery, Christopher Dewdney, and Darren Wershler-Henry. he teaches at the University of Calgary.The Xenotext Experiment: An Interview with Christian Bök In 1994, Bök published Crystallography, " "a pataphysical encyclopaedia that misreads the language of poetics through the conceits of geology." The Village Voice said of it: "Bök's concise reflections on mirrors, fractals, stones, and ice diabolically change the way you think about language — his, yours — so that what begins as description suddenly seems indistinguishable from the thing itself." Crystallography was reissued in 2003, and was nominated for a Gerald Lampert Award. Bök is most famous for Eunoia (2001), a book which took him 7 years to write. Eunoia consists of univocalics: The book uses only one vowel in each of its five chapters. In the book's main part, each chapter used just a single vowel, producing sentences such as this: “Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech.” cnjonline.com, God writes his love in one word It took 7 years to write Eunoia, and Bök believes "his book proves that each vowel has its own personality, and demonstrates the flexibility of the English language."news.bbc.co.uk, Beautiful vowels In preparation for the novel, Bök read the dictionary a total of five times, compiling an exhaustive list of vocabulary; Bök aimed to use almost all of these words during his work. Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry and published by Coach House Books, in 2001, Eunoia won the 2002 Griffin Prize and sold 20,000 copies. Canongate published Eunoia in Britain in Oct. 2008.telegraph.co.uk, There appears to be a something of a mini-boom in books about words The book was also a bestseller there, reaching #8 on the Top 10 bestselling charts for the year. Bök is a sound poet and has performed an extremely condensed version of the "Ursonate" by Kurt Schwitters. He has created conceptual art, making artist's books from Rubik's cubes and Lego bricks. He has also worked in science-fiction television by constructing artistic languages for Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley's Amazon. Recognition Eunoia won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002. In 2006, Bök and his work were the subject of an episode of the television series Heart of a Poet, produced by Canadian filmmaker Maureen Judge.Heart of a Poet: Season 1 On May 31, 2011, The BBC World Service broadcast Bök reading "The Xenotext."http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00gvpkk/The_Strand_31_05_2011/ In popular culture Bök's poem "Vowels" was used in the lyrics of a song on the EP A Quick Fix of Melancholy (2003) by the Norwegian band Ulver. Publications Poetry * Crystallography. Toronto: Coach House, 1994. * Eunoia. Coach House, 2001. * Pataphysics: The poetics of an imaginary science. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Edited * Ground Works: Avante-garde for thee. Toronto: Anansi, 2002. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Christian Bok, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, May 8, 2014. Audio / video *''Heart of a Poet: Episode 1, Christian Bok'' (DVD). Mississauga, ON: Heart of a Poet Productions, 2005. See also *List of Canadian poets *Concrete poetry *Sound poetry *Timeline of Canadian poetry References External links ;Poems *Selected Poetry of Christian Bök (1966- ) ("Birefringence," "Vowels") at Representative Poetry Online *Christian Bök profile & 4 poems at the Academy of American Poets *Christian Bök at the Poetry Foundation *Christian Bök @ EPC (Electronic Poetry Center) ;Audio / video *Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip *Christian Bok at PennSound *Christian Bok at YouTube ;Books *Christian Bok at Amazon.com ;About *Griffin Poetry Prize biography *Christian Bok at University of Calgary Faculty of English *Christian Bok, Experimental Poet at Utne Reader *"Christian Bok and the poetry of the future" at the National Post *Christian Bök pages on UbuWeb, including recordings, poetry, and essays *Christian Bök on Twitter Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian poets Category:York University alumni Category:Carleton University alumni Category:University of Calgary faculty Category:People from Toronto Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:20th-century poets Category:Sound poets Category:Canadian academics